Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 2 and 14 in my name.

On Amendment 2, I am incredibly grateful to the Government for their engagement on the importance of pre-appointment scrutiny for the Crown Estate commissioners. However, I recognise that my initial amendment in Committee was a bit ambitious and have restricted the amendment before your Lordships’ House today on Report to the chair of the Crown Estate commissioners. It is important, as I mentioned in the first group, as there is a decrease in parliamentary oversight. It is not uncommon for the chairs of the boards, or equivalent, of such significant public sector bodies to at least have some form of questioning prior to taking up their role.

I note that, in his letter yesterday, the Minister said:

“The Government has not tabled an amendment on this matter because there is already an established process by which roles such as this are added to the Cabinet Office’s pre-appointment scrutiny list. The Treasury will work with the Cabinet Office to progress this matter”.


I am grateful to the Government for their assurance that the chair of the Crown Estate commissioners could be added to the Cabinet Office’s pre-appointment scrutiny list; we will be holding the Government to account as this is progressed.

Amendment 14 is, again, related to the importance of the assets for which the Crown Estate is responsible. It has the stewardship of billions of pounds-worth of very important assets for the benefit of the nation. Some of these assets are on land, some make up the seabed, some are incredibly important thoroughfares in our main urban centres, and others might be important agricultural land across the nation. I can see very few guardrails to prevent the Crown Estate commissioners deciding to sell those assets. Indeed, there have been quite significant asset sales over recent years, and I was not really able to find any information as to what has been sold.

We made this argument in Committee, and I am grateful to the Government for their assurance that they will bring forward an amendment or some sort of process by which the seabed might be protected. However, my understanding is that the law in this area is very complicated, so I am somewhat concerned that a process could not be found that is seabed-specific. Nevertheless, I welcome the Government’s engagement and their recognition that selling off elements of our seabed in perpetuity would not be wise and should not be done without some form of transparency.

However, as I said previously, it is not just about the seabed; I also remain concerned about other important assets owned by the Crown Estate. My Amendment 14 simply proposes that, should the Crown Estate sell more than £10 million-worth of assets—I am happy to look at a different figure—there would be some form of transparency to Parliament, such that noble Lords and colleagues in the other place could see the assets being disposed of and make at least some assessment of whether that is the right course of action for the Crown Estate.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 15 in my name, which is in this group. I tabled the same amendment that we debated in Committee because my noble friend had not yet been able to respond in his promised letter; but, of course, he has now responded, and I presume all noble Lords have seen the letter. I found it very helpful, and I thank him for it. However, my amendment provides an opportunity to debate what is in that letter and issues that affect quite a lot of people—not only in the Isles of Scilly but in some of the other places related to the ownership of the Duchies or the Crown Estate. There are a few principles I would like to discuss and see where we get to.

What I found most interesting was that my noble friend’s letter was quite clear that both Duchies are private estates—I do not think there is any debate about that now. The Duchy has been saying this for a long time, and it is in his letter from the Treasury. I am also grateful for the explanations about the finance and the involvement, or not, of the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, the National Audit Office, et cetera. But then we get into rather more interesting and difficult territory. In his letter, my noble friend says:

“Crown bodies … are not bound by the enfranchisement legislation”


that your Lordships’ House debated over many months earlier this year. I question how a private estate cannot be bound by legislation such as that—why should the Duchy be exempt?

We then get into an even deeper mystery about what are called “excepted” areas. There is a distinct lack of transparency here. I will not go into great detail about the problems faced by the tenants on the Isles of Scilly because noble Lords can read material from the previous year or two. During the legislation at the end of the last Parliament, the then Chief Whip, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, read out a parliamentary undertaking that attempted to differentiate between what they call “non-excepted” and “excepted” areas. So my first question to my noble friend the Minister is: what is an excepted area, and who decides? Is it Parliament, the Government or the landowner—in this case the Duke of Cornwall—who decides what should or should not be included in legislation? That is interesting for a private sector company, and it needs debating.

Given that, last weekend, there was a lot of publicity in the media, including the Sunday Times, you start wondering what “private” means in this context. Presumably, all private bodies should pay tax—that is pretty fundamental to our life here—including income tax. The Duchy and His Majesty say that they pay tax, but it is voluntary. I would love to pay voluntary tax and to decide how much it was, as I am sure many other noble Lords would, but that is not what it is all about. They do not pay corporation tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax. They get all that rental income, which noble Lords may have read about in the Sunday Times, from ambulances parking on their land, with the National Health Service being charged and paying the Duchy of Cornwall, I think it was. This seems to be a bit of a recycling of the cash that the Duchy claims it needs to charge people. This comes back to the Duchy claiming credit—I see this on the Isles of Scilly—for allowing bodies to use its land and charging them for it.

One example is that the farmers on the Isles of Scilly want an abattoir built so that they do not have to transport animals to the mainland, which I think is a good idea. The Duchy said, “You can have the land”. Many of us think that it does not own the land anyway, but, leaving that to one side, if it allocates land to an abattoir, it will then charge the farmers for using it. Is that right, when the land does not really belong to it and it is not contributing to the cost? That is another debate that we need to have on this.

Perhaps what is wrong is that the Duchy needs the money, but given what is in the rest of the Bill, it will result in His Majesty and other members of the family getting quite a lot more. One could surmise that they do not need the money and that it might be better if they paid their taxes and invested properly in an estate, like many large estate owners in this country already do. Noble Lords will have heard me speak about the appalling transport services between the Isles of Scilly and the mainland, where a single fare by ship or plane usually costs the best part of £100. The Duchy could contribute to that—it would just be small change.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, Amendment 41 in my name is included in this group of amendments and is supported by my noble friend Lord Wigley. This amendment would require the publication of an agreed fiscal framework between the Treasury and the Crown Estate before commencement of the Act.

During day one of Committee there were strong arguments made in support of the second group of amendments—a number of them seeking to write a fiscal framework. I believe that there is a shared view from around the Chamber that such a framework should have been drafted and published before Second Reading of this Bill. I am therefore grateful that the Minister, in his response to the second group of amendments, committed to publishing the framework before Report. If that is the case, I will not need to push for an amendment of this kind on Report.

However, I will take this opportunity to highlight some concerns regarding the possible content of the fiscal framework. I am concerned by the possibility of no hard cap on borrowing. I am led to believe that the framework will instead impose a loan-to-value ratio of 25%, which, as the Minister has already noted, would currently be around £3 billion and could go beyond that. To put this into perspective, the Welsh Government fiscal framework has a cap of £l billion on capital expenditure, with an annual borrowing limit of £150 million, which it can borrow from the National Loans Fund or a commercial bank. I ask the Minister: would the passing of this Bill as it stands, alongside a fiscal framework of a loan-to-value ratio of 25%, give the Crown Estate more or less borrowing power than the devolved Government of Wales?

I share the view expressed by the noble baroness, Lady Kramer, that the Crown Estate is no “cuddly” organisation. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to my question on how the proposed borrowing powers will compare to the current fiscal powers of the devolved Governments, particularly the Welsh Government.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 42 in this group. It is another attempt at putting a condition on the Government in bringing this Bill into effect, until the Crown Estate in my case has fulfilled the undertakings given on Report of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act: specifically, the commitment that it would publish its lease extension policy. I got an answer from the Minister’s colleague in July when I asked when this was going to happen. The answer was very interesting. It was that the Crown would act in accordance with the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 and the statutes it amended, subject to specific specified conditions—I do not know what specific unspecified conditions are, but we will leave that out—set out in the undertaking, and the expectation was that the Crown bodies would work with the tenants as they developed these policies.

The problem is of course that the specific specifying conditions referred to refer to the Isles of Scilly and the tenants there—about whom I have spoken to your Lordships many times—are suffering significantly due to their inability to negotiate leases of a reasonable length of time which would be allowed under the new Act.

I was told subsequently that this Crown statement cannot be made in advance of the relevant regulations under the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act being tabled, because that is the way it always is. But the worry I have is also that the Duchy of Cornwall and Crown Estate may publish them and there will be no opportunity for debating them and offering and suggesting changes to them. This gets back to my question last time we raised this: who is in charge? I was very pleased to get a response from Dr John Kirkhope, an expert on Duchy things, explaining that this is all because of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall (Accounts) Act 1838. It is because the two Duchies got their revenue from George I and George IV and, before that, from being Electors of Hanover rather than Kings or Queens of England

I am told that, under Salic law, a female could not be elector of Hanover, so Queen Victoria suddenly thought that she was going to lose all this money. She persuaded the Parliament of the time to bring in this Bill, which became the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall (Accounts) Act 1838. I can read out the whole Act—it is not that long—but I think noble Lords would probably prefer that I did not. It required the two duchies to submit accounts to the Government every year for Parliament to approve.

When I tried to put down a Question to ask for how many years this had taken place, who could tell me which years those were and where the accounts were, I was told by the clerks that it was a bit unclear who was in charge. Was it Parliament, the Government or the Crown? I do not think it would be the Crown, because that would mean the Crown being in charge of itself, which is probably not very desirable and probably not true. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could tell me over how many years these two duchies have submitted accounts and over how many years, if any, they have been debated in either House of Parliament.

My question to my noble friend is: when will the Government publish these Crown Estate policies? Do they have to wait until they have published secondary legislation on leasehold reform? When these special conditions are published, will the Government provide an opportunity for debate? I can see the Crown saying that it is in charge and that nobody can tell it what to do, and so we cannot debate them. The conditions applicable to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act will be modified to the extent that the people of the Isles of Scilly, who suffer quite a lot, not just from rents but from transport and a few other things, will not have an opportunity to debate this and see whether the duchies are playing fair. I look forward to my noble friend’s response.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, as a follow-on to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said in relation to Wales, if the Crown Estate is devolved to Scotland, why should it not be devolved to Northern Ireland? The Crown Estate plays a critical role in the stewardship of our seas and terrestrial environment. As well as large landholdings, the estate manages the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, along with 50% of our coastline, and it will support the tripling of the electricity sector’s capacity, with the deployment of 125 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050.

During Second Reading, I pointed out that, in the Northern Ireland context, the electricity industry is managed on an all-island basis, north-south, through the all-Ireland electricity market. I received a very helpful response from the Minister, my noble friend Lord Livermore, in relation to this issue. Could he give some thought to the devolution of the Crown Estate to Northern Ireland, in the context of the electricity market and how the electricity supply is managed? Can he say whether there will be a connection and co-operation with the Irish Government on the Great British energy market and the all-Ireland energy market and the Irish Sea?

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, briefly, I support these amendments. I get involved, along with many other noble Lords, in offshore energy issues, particularly in Cornwall. I can see a time coming when there will be enormous pressure on central government as to where these great big tanks—the floating windmills or whatever you want to call them—are manufactured, where they are located, from where they are serviced and, probably most important of all, where the power lines come ashore. There has already been lots of talk about Port Talbot as the only possible place for their manufacture for the south-west. There is lots of flat land there and it is probably very good, but, living in Cornwall, I would like to make sure that some benefits come to the ports in Cornwall from some of those issues.

It would seem, from what many noble Lords have said, that there is a strong argument for drawing a line down the Bristol Channel out to the medium and sticking to it, then using that line for any kind of debate or discussion that takes place on offshore oil or offshore wind, or anything else like that. If not, we are going to have this kind of debate every time: “How much does Wales get?”, “How much does Cornwall get?”, “How much does Devon get?”. It would be much better if it was agreed—I am not sure by whom, but there has to be someone in this Government—where this line was and everything that leads from there.

While I am on my feet, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister where the Duchy of Cornwall and its offshore or beach interests come into this, if at all. The Duchy of Cornwall has the right to treasure trove if treasure is found in Cornwall, and that goes into the coffers of the Duke of Cornwall—as opposed to in the rest of the country, where it would go into the coffers of the Government. Again, it would be nice to know where the boundaries are. It would be much easier to have a good debate about them if we knew where the start and finish were.

--- Later in debate ---

In effect, the Crown Estate is seeking to make a profit on the backs of leaseholders, who are being offered the freehold at a far higher price than they would have had to pay had their freeholder not disappeared. That is what the Crown Estate believes, but what does the Minister think? How does he begin to defend what I have just said? In his Written Answer to me, published today, the Minister confirms that we will have a new “draft Memorandum of Understanding” between his department and the Crown Estate. The solution is for that document to make it clear that the Acts of Parliament apply when the Crown disposes of freeholds under the process of escheat. I look forward to his reply and to the views of others who had the patience to listen to what I have just said. I make it clear that I will come back to this on Report if there is no satisfactory resolution before then.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to add a little extra interest to the statements made by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. We discussed this at Second Reading and my Amendment 42, which will come at the end of tomorrow night if we ever get that far, is about the same issue. I go back to the statement made by the Chief Whip of the previous Government, who basically said that the Crown will comply with the legislation if it chooses to; that is a summary. The way it chooses to do it will be published at some time, which is relevant to my amendment.

The reason I am speaking now is because the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, beg the question: who is in charge? Is it the Government or the Crown Estate or, in my case, the Duchy of Cornwall? Each one blames the other and says that they are not in charge, but they actually probably are. They then refuse to have correspondence. I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Young, got a letter.

I have a good friend, Dr John Kirkhope, who advises on many issues around the Duchy of Cornwall, which is not much different to the Crown Estate. He tried to get a freedom of information decision on whether he could seek copies of correspondence between the Duchy and the Government—I think that includes the Crown Estate, the Duchy and the Government—on matters of policy. The answer was no. He went back and said, “Here you have an unelected body apparently advising government on matters of policy and that does not seem very right to me”.

Paragraph 16 of the eight-page response from the Information Commissioner’s Office on whether any information should be disclosed says:

“The Commissioner considers that the following factors will be key indicators of the formulation or the development of government policy”.


There are then three bullet points.

“the final decision will be made either by the Cabinet or the relevant minister; … the government intends to achieve a particular outcome or change in the real world; and … the consequences of the decision will be wide-ranging”.

The Crown Estate therefore

“advised that it considered direct correspondence as well as correspondence where the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Cornwall had been copied into”

and decided that it is reasonable to withhold information.

It looks as if the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Cornwall—we never mention the Duchy of Lancaster, but I think it is rather less difficult—seem to be a Government of their own. This is back to the feudal system, where Ministers, whom we elect and appoint, are unable to effect any legislation regarding the Crown Estate or the Duchy because they are not so important. It is back to the feudal system, and I shall come back to this on Amendment 42.

I hope my noble friend will give the noble Lord, Lord Young, a pretty strong response, because this is something that will go on and on—whether it is escheat or something else. The people affected are getting pretty fed up with the Duchy and Crown Estate playing them and not coming back with a decent response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I would like to be helpful to the noble Lord. I am told that the memorandum of understanding deals exclusively with borrowing powers, so it may not be the most appropriate vehicle to insert that into.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, I have a very simple question to ask him. We have had a very interesting debate, and I have understood much of it, but who does the Crown Estate—and therefore the Duchy of Cornwall—report to? Is it the Government or Parliament? Who controls them, or are they a law unto themselves? In spite of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I do not think the King comes into it.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

It is a very good question, and I shall endeavour to find the answer and write to my noble friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I congratulate him on the work that he is doing in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

I support these amendments for two reasons. First, earlier this year the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and I discovered that Defra’s JNCC had produced a report advising the Government not to drill for oil in MPAs. We had a debate about it and the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, basically said, “Drilling for oil is more important than protecting the environment”. I do not know what has happened to that. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister could come back to me at some point and say, but that was a very low point. The reports were very good, and I do not think that the oil demand for this country needed to have particular oil wells. I might be wrong, but I think it was in the 33rd oil and gas licensing round. We must be pretty careful about this. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, there is a balance to be drawn.

I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has talked to the fishermen’s association in Cornwall. I have been talking to it, at its request, and it is concerned. It is a reasonable concern, because he is quite right about some of the methods used in fishing at the moment, which are pretty unacceptable. On the other hand, those fishermen are frightened that, when we get these wonderful floating windmills in the south-west or anywhere else, they will be told that they cannot finish within several miles of the installation. I do not know whether that applies to the supply cables and everything else like that, but there needs to be a proper consultation about who needs what, how big these areas of protection are and, if necessary, where the fishermen can fish instead.

I am told that there is a report from Defra that was commissioned a year ago, entitled “Working on the Marine Special Protection Project”. I do not know whether the Minister knows about this. It has not been published but it would be a very good contribution to the debate if it could be and discussed with the fishing industry and the other people involved in offshore, and maybe a proper conclusion—

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

As we are in Committee, I would just like to answer one of those questions. I do speak to the Cornish Fish Producers’ Organisation and absolutely commend Chris Ranford, who operates it, for his great work in that area. The noble Lord is right. One thing that needs to come out of these planning areas is the fishing industry having the right spaces to fulfil what it wants to do in economic growth and the good things that happen to the local and coastal economies. This is important and I am thankful to him for mentioning it.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. We both need to have another discussion with Chris and his colleagues, as does the Minister, to make sure we can come up with something that works for everyone. I end by congratulating the noble Lord on his appointment; I look forward to working with him.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 2nd September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for his introduction to this Bill. I congratulate him. He has a challenge. He said that the Bill will bring the Crown Estate into the 21st century; he has some way to go, as many of the speeches that noble Lords have made have shown, but it is a good start. My remarks will include comments about the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster, because they all come under the Crown. I have a number of questions which I would be very grateful if my noble friend could answer at some stage, either tonight or later.

I suppose I start with geography. Many noble Lords have talked about the seabed, but where is the boundary between what is sea and what is land? Is it high water or low water? Other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned what you can do on those bits of water. I have one small example from the Helford river in Cornwall, where the Duchy of Cornwall, which claims to own it, introduced Japanese oysters, which had the rather stupid result not only of those oysters dying but of killing all the other native oysters on the river. One of my neighbours took the Duchy to court and said, “You haven’t done an environmental study on the effect that Japanese oysters might have on the other things in the water and everywhere else”. The secretary of the Duchy of Cornwall, who has now retired, made the classic remark to the tribunal, “To all intents and purposes, we believe that we are above the law”. I call that arrogant, and I shall come back to it later.

We had another problem with what the Crown Estate should, could or could not do in our discussions on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, on 23 April. A number of noble Lords were not very happy that the Minister tried to allow offshore oil drilling to take place in marine protected areas—that is at col. 496. The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, who is not in his place, basically said that drilling for oil was really much more important than the advice from the JNCC—the statutory committee from Defra—which said that we should not do it. I wonder how the Crown Estate and the Government would look on that in the future: is drilling for oil more important than protecting the marine environment? What criteria should one use?

We have not discussed so much the sideline of how much money the Royal Family gets from the Crown Estate to perform its duties. We have talked about percentages—15% for the King and an extra 10% for doing up Buckingham Palace—but then, of course, the Duchy of Lancaster also gives the Royal Family £20 million and the Duchy of Cornwall £24 million. I compare that—which I think comes to about £132 million and goes to keeping the Royal Family in the state that we presumably think is appropriate—with the equivalent £49 million for the Dutch royal family, and the same for the Norwegian royal family. Figures for other royal families go down from there. Who decides what the percentage should be or how it should be allocated? Should not Parliament decide?

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, was very kind about a previous speech that I made about the problems of the freehold, which is next on my shopping list and still uncertain, because none of the Crown bodies has yet published how they intend to deal with the freeholds on properties that they own. It makes me wonder why it is that, hundreds of years after George III did a deal with the Treasury where he gave Crown land in return for a yearly stipend, the Duchy of Cornwall was not included in that. It must be the only organisation that receives a blank cheque without doing anything at all. I will not repeat what the noble Lord said, because we will probably have to discuss that on another occasion.

I cannot see how this behaviour justifies the sort of largesse that is given by the state—which is us—to its constitutional monarchy. The Crown is clearly not going to treat its tenants as other landlords have agreed to do by the passing of the Bill. It may publish its own rules on tenancy when it feels like it. It is uncertain whether the other landlords will behave in the same way, but I expect that the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Northumberland and all the other big landowners will comply, because that is what the law says. But there is no debate with the Duchy of Cornwall or the Crown Estate, and there is no appeal, and Ministers often seem frightened of engaging. On this side of the House, we are members of the Labour Party, and parliamentary democracy should mean that we take this very seriously and try to deal with it in a way that means everybody is treated equally.

I have some suggestions that could simplify things. I suspect they will be rejected by my noble friend, but it is worth outlining them because, at the end of today’s debate, many noble Lords will wonder, with so many things going on, what can be done—especially as we all want the Bill to go through.

One suggestion would be to incorporate the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster into the Crown Estate and remove all the exemptions; in other words, everybody would have to behave in the same way, with no special terms. The relationship between the Crown Estate, the Duchies, the Treasury and Parliament needs clarity, and the ability to debate, challenge and reach agreement. We cannot do that at the moment. The system is, frankly, medieval and feudal. Nobody dares to challenge the Duchy of Cornwall or the Crown Estate, but I think that we should.

My last suggestion is probably even more radical. I have listened to some wonderful speeches this afternoon. It would not take much to nationalise the Crown Estate or to include the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster in a nationalised body that owns the seabed and a few other things. Noble Lords will find that in many other countries the seabed is owned by the state. There is no reason why ours should not be. Parliament could allocate an annual grant to the King to cover all his royal expenses. It might stop us pussyfooting around. We do not want to upset anybody, but we want answers. I have a horrible feeling that Ministers may shy away from confronting what needs to be confronted. More power to my noble friend’s elbow if he takes this forward.

King’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

This was a fairly lightweight King’s Speech, and the elements of transport about which I shall speak are pretty light—although I welcome some legislation on self-driving vehicles; I am sure that we will have some fun debating that. I was very surprised to hear His Majesty say that he was going

“to deal with the scourge of unlicensed pedicabs”.

I do not know how many pedicabs he comes across in his horse and cart. That is a fairly strong word; I think that they are rather fun, but they obviously need some regulation.

I was concerned by the comment from the Minister, when he opened the debate, about the war on motorists. Is he substituting that with a war on pedestrians, cyclists and the environment? I think that we can all live together.

As my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester mentioned, the biggest loss was the lack of any legislation for railways; it is very sad. He went into it in some detail, and he is absolutely right.

Many noble Lords have spoken about the need for investment, including my noble friend Lord Hain in particular detail, but it has to be a wise investment and the Government have to manage or facilitate it in a manner that is best value for money and need. They have to be honest and transparent about this to Parliament. If I have been seen as the only person in your Lordships’ House against HS2, it is not because I do not like railways—I love them—but because their work on HS2 was not followed up well. That was the model chosen by the Government, and while we can debate whether you need very high-speed rail, the costs and overspec meant that, eventually, the Prime Minister was right to cancel it.

What we have to do now is make sure that the Government, whichever Government, invest in any alternatives that many noble Lords have talked about. Is the Department for Transport capable managing this? I refer noble Lords to an interesting report that the National Audit Office put out on 6 November. It says:

“DfT is not able … to deliver all of its priorities”


or

“to deliver its major projects”.

The NAO has looked at the Department for Transport and it goes into some detail about the money that has been, and should have been, spent, and everything else like that. It gives various projects traffic lights: red, amber or green. There are one or two green projects in the Department for Transport, quite a lot of amber ones and the two bits of HS2 are of course red. I could list them all, but we do not have time for that now.

The key for me is that the NAO seems to be right in suggesting that the department seems to be incapable of managing projects or controlling costs. The HS2 case has been made worse by concealing the project costs and timescales from Parliament. I complained to Simon Case in the Cabinet Office a couple of years ago and asked him to investigate whether the DfT was breaking the Ministerial Code by misleading Parliament. He passed my letter to the Department for Transport for it to answer; that was not really the independent response I was looking for. Of course, many Lords committees and a few Commons committees have also complained about this, but, sadly, no one in government seems to have been listening to where this has got to.

I have been talking about railways, but this is about big projects; I suspect that things such as Hinkley Point C are in a similar situation, except we do not get told about it because it will all end up on our electricity bill in 10 years’ time, so maybe nobody minds. My question to the Minister is therefore: what will happen next? This has gone on for 15 years now, so is it not time for a proper independent public inquiry into what has gone wrong with the management, governance, costs and planning of HS2 to find out why nobody in the Department of Transport and the Cabinet generally, the House of Commons or the House of Lords has looked into this and demanded fully independent information on an ongoing basis? That might give some people pleasure, but the most important thing is a lesson for the future. Unless we have this, we will make the same mistakes on projects again and again, and that will not help the investment that many noble Lords have spoken about.

Postal Packets (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for outlining these regulations as she and the Government desire to present them. As we look closer at them, and upon further investigation, we know that the reality for people living in Northern Ireland will be quite different.

What does the Minister think Northern Ireland’s constitutional position is? Is it a part of the United Kingdom or not? In reality, all the Government are doing through this statutory instrument, these regulations, is strengthening opposition to the Windsor Framework within the unionist population in Northern Ireland because people are seeing the unfolding of the reality. The reality is that the Windsor Framework was sold by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on spin, not reality.

These regulations directly contradict what the Prime Minister stated when introducing the Windsor Framework on 27 February, namely that it

“removes any sense of a border in the Irish Sea”.

That is a very clear statement. So, does it? In reality, the framework deepens the border in the Irish Sea rather than removing it and does so without there being any redeeming upside in the regulations, which the Government claim exist and existed in the Stormont brake SI.

The regulations have been the subject of a critical report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which called attention to them on the grounds of there being no consultation or impact assessment. It also highlighted the Government’s refusal to answer key questions about the regulations, which creates the clear impression that they are hiding something.

The fact that the Government seek to hide the true implications of these regulations is reflected in the answers that they provided to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Specifically, they claim that the impact of the regulations is modest and that they just need to be able to give HMRC and the border agency powers to detain and seize illicit movements. In an effort to change the subject, they go on to talk about the introduction of a “green lane” for packages on 1 October. Specifically, they say that their purpose is to secure the integrity of the Windsor Framework by

“ensuring that Border Force and HMRC have powers to detain, inspect, and seize goods moved illicitly in parcels from GB to NI”.

It is interesting that, when the committee in the other place discussed this, attention was drawn to the Minister’s reply that she was concerned about “hazardous” substances, “invasive species” and other things mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum being transferred by post from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. However, would the Minister not be concerned about them being transferred in parcels from London to Scotland or to Wales? If the regulations are all about protecting markets, why are the Government singling out Northern Ireland?

It sounds reasonable that provision should be made so that the requisite authorities can detain illicit movements, for example of drugs, in parcels but, through the deployment of “illicit”, these words conceal the fact that what is in view is not the movement of drugs and the like but, rather, any goods movements across the border created by these regulations that is in violation of them—movements that are perfectly legal today and just part of what being in the same single market means. Therefore, rather than restoring Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom single market, these regulations give effect to the additional sense in which Northern Ireland is placed outside the single market, which is increasingly becoming a Great Britain single market.

The simple effect of these regulations is to build in the Irish Sea a border that currently does not exist, in relation to which full customs requirements can be made. The consequences of this include packets going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland having to be put in the same category as foreign packages. That is why I asked this question: where does the Minister see Northern Ireland? Is it a foreign country, a third country, or is it a full constituent part of the United Kingdom, equal to every other part? The definition of “exporting” is being changed to include movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, replacing references to “the United Kingdom” with “Great Britain”. On the question about what the Minister thinks, empty words and rhetoric will not be sufficient because this is reality. These regulations—the statutory instrument—are reality.

The Minister and the Government mentioned the Belfast agreement—I have no doubt that others will before this debate is finished—and how it is so important to protect it. It constitutes international law. At the heart of the agreement is the following statement:

“acknowledge that while a substantial section of the people in Northern Ireland share the legitimate wish of a majority of the people of the island of Ireland for a united Ireland, the present wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, freely exercised and legitimate, is to maintain the Union and, accordingly, that Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom reflects and relies upon that wish; and that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people”.

I believe that the Postal Packets (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023 plainly change the status of Northern Ireland such that it is to be treated as foreign with respect to the rest of the United Kingdom for some custom purposes. That is totally wrong and is deeply offensive to the people of Northern Ireland who, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, mentioned a few moments ago, sacrificed so much——many of them gave their lives—to remain part of this great, cherished United Kingdom.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly about another milestone in what I see as the postal service’s disaster this week. I listened very carefully to what noble Lords said about the parcel service, or lack of, between Britain and Northern Ireland, but the other disaster is what many people call the most widespread injustice in British legal history, which is the Horizon IT inquiry. Will we have post offices at all in the future and will they operate properly? It is a very serious issue. The chair of the inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, published his first interim report on 17 July, which is well documented in the Guardian today. I will give a few highlights of this long-running matter, which has been going on for 20 to 30 years. There are comments that Post Office staff were grouping the suspected postmasters, most of whom have been demonstrated to be innocent, by the colour of their skin. I find it quite extraordinary that this can happen in this century—this was in 2011.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

My Lords, the Division Bell is ringing, so let us suspend proceedings for eight minutes. Scamper off, rush back, and we will carry on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

I shall be quick, my Lords, because we have been at this for some time.

I was just saying that the Post Office has been continuing to prosecute innocent people. Suddenly, it has found 4,767 new documents, which will of course have to go into the inquiry, delaying it further. I suggest that it is not co-operating at all fully with the inquiry. Nevertheless, its chief executive got a bonus of £455,000 last year, so he must be all right. Fifty executives also got bonuses relating to the inquiry. I ask the Minister this, very gently: can the Government finally get a grip of this organisation? Most importantly, will they read the start of Wyn Williams’s report, which was published yesterday and says that the compensation schemes are running late? It also states:

“Under the legislation now in force all payments of compensation … must be made by 7 August 2024. My current view is that this will not be achieved”.


That is a terrible reflection on Ministers over the years—it is not just the present lot but many other people—but I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort that, once and for all, the Government will get a grip of this horrible project.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it will spare the blushes of the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Weir, for them not yet to be in their places to hear me say that I agree with everything that they said. The debate that we have had, while more respectful and with more decorum than the extraordinary scenes in the committee of the House of Commons on Monday, does not undermine the seriousness of the measures that we are being asked to approve. “Yes Minister” could probably have had an episode on how to bring forward regulations with considerable impact and long-term consequences, but with an innocuous title, by taking powers very early, before they are necessary, without consulting those who have to implement them and without giving any data on their likely impact and, as a security measure, removing members of a committee which is asked to approve the regulations because you know that they will be significantly concerned about them.

I hope that this is not a trend. As the Minister said, this is not about implementing the Windsor Framework, but I hope that it does not start a precedent for how the Windsor Framework will be implemented. We were told, notwithstanding noble Lords’ concerns in a debate that we had on the Windsor Framework and the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, on the wider issue with the framework, that it was starting a new chapter. I hoped that that new chapter would be about transparency, openness, consultation, trying to build consensus, notwithstanding how difficult it would be, and bringing people with the Government on implementation, but this is in stark contrast to the way forward.

Stephen Farry MP intervened on the Minister on Monday calling for support for the business community in GB trading with Northern Ireland. I reiterate that call. It is necessary to carry on the support that is being provided to businesses to overcome some of the difficulties in the Government’s initial protocol so that they can overcome the difficulties that they will face with the implementation of the Windsor Framework. The Road Haulage Association said very clearly that this measure will bring new burdens on business and add to bureaucracy. That is not unfettering. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, was absolutely correct: this is fettering internal UK trade.

The Minister in the House of Commons said that this SI was the result of “a hard compromise”. That language was not used by the Minister here. It is, to some extent, more honest to say that it results from a hard compromise but when the Government have made that compromise, they then have to own it and act honestly and openly.

Let me give one example of where there is still confusion. I commend the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report. I hope the Minister will have clear responses to its strong recommendations and concerns. They were not made lightly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, indicated, but followed proper consideration from a balanced perspective. That should be taken into consideration.

The Government used the example of a granny in GB sending a birthday parcel to her granddaughter in Northern Ireland. That would not be affected by this SI, but if the granny used online purchasing from a company that then used another company to dispatch the parcel to the granddaughter, it would be covered by the SI. We do not live in the 19th century as far as how people send parcels. The Government need to be clear about the estimated number of parcels that are likely to fall under each of the lanes, the percentage that will now be opened for checks and the likely impact on the businesses that would be dispatching and receiving them. The Minister in the House of Commons said that the Government could provide only estimates at this stage, and there is no impact assessment, as there should have been.

On a previous occasion in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, raised the issue of measures. The Minister said that this is not about implementing the framework agreement but, conveniently, it is about implementing it in order to get out of having an impact assessment. The Government have said that an impact assessment is not needed because, as the Minister said, this is so limited in scope. When it affects all parcels being sent from GB to NI, it is not limited in scope; and when the definition of those will now have to be inserted after “foreign postal packets”, that is not limited in scope either. When will the Government provide the detailed information about the impact of all that is likely to be covered by these regulations?

Gross Domestic Product: Wales and the UK

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Just to reassure the noble Lord with regard to Wales, in the first two rounds of the levelling-up fund, £330 million has been invested so far. That exceeds the commitment that 5% of those funds would be invested in Wales, but we always seek to improve our processes around those issues, and I shall happily commit to working with colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up to make sure that we build on the success that we have had so far with this fund.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister take forward with much more vigour the idea of Celtic Sea offshore wind, which can only really be built in places such as Port Talbot, where there is deep water and lots of land? That might help redress some of the economic disasters that other noble Lords have spoken about.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has an excellent track record in delivering offshore wind, and I am sure that that will continue. As I have said, we are investing across Wales, and that includes two freeports in Wales—the Celtic Freeport and the Anglesey Freeport, which will both be backed by policy and planning permissions, as well as up to £26 million in funding in each area.

Corporate Profits: Inflation

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, the answer is twofold. We are looking closely at the data and will continue to do so, but we do not see the pattern that the noble Lord refers to so far. We will also work with the regulators in the main areas—the FCA when it comes to the banking sector and the passing on of higher interest rates to savers, as well as mortgage holders—and look at the work of the supermarkets to ensure that their profits are fair and reasonable and driven by fair competition in the sector. We will keep all of that under review. We have agreed a series of steps with the regulators to make sure that action is taken if competition is not working as it should.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the IMF that the main cause of inflation is excessive corporate profits, and the fat cat salaries that go with them, rather than the wage claims such as those from people in the National Health Service?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

As I have explained to noble Lords, the IMF analysis applied to the euro area.

Cross-Government Cost Cutting

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not believe that it is within my responsibilities to carry out an audit of special advisers, but I will take the noble Lord’s point back to the department. I should probably declare an interest as a former special adviser myself; I would not be best placed to undertake such work.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I could be helpful to the Minister and give her some advice. If she wants to save £150 billion, she could cancel HS2.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I always welcome helpful advice. However, I am not sure that I can take it up in this case.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Queen’s Speech with its interesting number of transport-related Bills. The Minister spoke about the need for investment in infrastructure and about the northern powerhouse, which several other noble Lords have mentioned. He is absolutely right. However, as my noble friend Lady Jones said, there is still a terrible mismatch between spend per unit of population in the south-east and that in the northern powerhouse—I think it is about 10:1.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, challenged the Opposition to say where the money would come from. I can offer two suggestions that may interest Ministers. The first is to cut the specification of HS2, without stopping it or building longer tunnels, or anything else that the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, might have wanted. I think that £10 billion could be saved with no additional provisions, just by reducing the specification. You do not need to go 400 kilometres per hour to save 20 minutes in getting to Birmingham, to then have to walk for 20 minutes from the new Birmingham station to the old one. A lot of money could be saved there.

Another interesting suggestion is to save money by cancelling the Thames tideway tunnel. I am sure Ministers will say that that is impossible. However, the capital cost is about £4.2 billion and the London Infrastructure Plan 2050 quotes Professor Colin Green, professor of water economics at Middlesex University, as saying that if you implemented the integrated water resource management as an alternative you could save £36 billion—and yes, I have got the figure right. That sounds rather a lot, but of course it is over 30 years. Quite a lot of savings could be made there, and maybe that will help redress the balance and bring a little common sense to these big projects.

I turn now from large to smaller projects and the buses Bill. I am not going to go into it in detail now because we will have plenty of opportunity for that. There are some very interesting and welcome governance arrangements in the Bill, particularly for franchising, which are very similar to passenger rail. A local agency, a council or a not-for-profit organisation specifies the timetable, fares and other customer needs and puts it out to tender, awards contracts and monitors performance. They can run alongside open access or commercial services, just like on the railways. Of course, they are all designed to provide an environmentally friendly, economically available and affordable service. I think we could say that that is a sort of powerhouse for all, particularly in the north.

However, I live in Cornwall, which is—I am very grateful—included in the franchise option. Change is needed—the bus services are pretty bad and integration with the trains is sometimes bad—but it does not always happen. There is one place, even further away, that is completely left out: the Isles of Scilly. My partner lives in the Isles of Scilly, so I go there quite often. It does not appear that anything is happening there to move the economy forward. There is of course great tourism, but the transport is pretty awful. The income values are as low as in Cornwall, which receives money from the EU structural fund, as we know, and things will get worse if we follow the line of all the Tory MPs in Cornwall who, with one voice, want to leave the EU. Most of the money for Cornwall and the Scilly Isles comes from the EU. However, that is an aside. In Scilly, there are no council-specified transport projects and no specification on price, timetable, quality or frequency—it does not exist. There is no ferry in the winter. Air services are often disrupted by fog and sometime the islands are cut off for days, with over 2,000 people living there. The charges are also shooting up. Last week, a single journey on the ferry cost £55 and was £82 by air. If you want to take your partner and a couple of kids—the family—there and back it does not half cost a lot of money. Freight costs are 40% higher and the dear old “Scillonian” is 40 years old. It is probably the oldest passenger ferry in Europe unless there are a few limping around the Greek islands that are a little older, but we do not want that. The real challenge for me is that there is one monopoly supplier that, sadly, ignores complaints large and small and fails to engage.

I welcomed what was in the Bill for buses and thought that maybe there could be an amendment to include ferries. I am not sure that the Minister would like that and it would probably not be appropriate. But could one have a kind of franchise for a community-led service specifying quality, fares, frequency, services and affordability rather like what has been done in the Scottish islands, because tourists are honestly put off by the charges. That is the solution. The current monopoly supplier will not consider any outside interference in services, new craft or support or even an interest in a winter service. There is no evidence of a replacement for the “Scillonian”, and it is unlikely unless the fares go up even more. Unfortunately, as happens in so many small islands, there is an unwillingness to speak out so it is something that needs to be considered.

I do not expect the Minister to respond tonight. Perhaps he would like to write to me—I expect he has a few letters to write. Something along the lines of the bus franchising Bill would be a real shot in the arm for the Isles of Scilly. We have gone beyond the stage when Ministers can say that there is a viable service operating at the moment. It may be viable for the shareholders, but not for the people of the Scillies and their visitors.